A domain is the address of your cyberspace. A domain name is your identity on the internet. A domain name reveals so much about you and your website. It is important to get a right domain name to get a good first impression. If you want to create your presence felt on the internet, getting a domain name is perhaps the starting point. It helps you to gain so many options on the internet which can only follow once you have a domain registered under your name.

A domain is nothing but a website address on the internet. It refers to a unique name that identifies one or more computers that have access to the internet. It appears on the web site URL (Uniform Resource Locator). What companies like GoDaddy, BigRock, NameCheap and others provides a place for you to search and register domain names. Individuals, agencies and investors can buy domains from them with an availability factor defined crudely by the first come, first served basis. These domains become part of the International Domain Name System (DNS).

A domain name says a lot about who you are and what you do. For businesses especially, picking out the right domain name is often the starting point to building a successful online presence

Based on their extensions and the value they create in the time to come they can be classified into different categories of Top Level Domains (TLDs), country domains and others. We will study about those later in this section.

Get a clear picture of what domain is with the following example:

Protocol:

In information technology, a protocol is the special set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate. Protocols specify interactions between the communicating entities.

A uniform set of rules that enable two devices to connect and transmit data to one another. Protocols determine how data are transmitted between computing devices and over networks. They define issues such as error control and data compression methods. The protocol determines the following: type of error checking to be used, data compression method (if any), how the sending device will indicate that it has finished a message and how the receiving device will indicate that it has received the message. Internet protocols include TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), FTP (File Transfer Protocol), and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

Sub-Domain:

A subdomain is a domain that is part of a top-level domain. For example, example.com is a top-level domain andstore.example.com is a subdomain.

How to Find Domain Owners in Seconds

The most crucial part of selling domains is finding buyers. Once you are out there selling domains. Your first action is to find the right buyer for your domains. For this purpose there is one thing which many newcomers fall short on. It is not keeping your WHOIS information up to date and easy to reach for prospective buyers.

Updated WHOIS information can work both ways. Let me explain it from the buyer point of view first. Suppose there is this buyer who is looking to buy content related domains. You have a domain called contentadda.com. Suppose the buyer somehow finds this domain and tries to contact you. Somehow he can’t. Can you guess the reason?

It is because you have not made efforts to make it easy for buyers to find you. Certain things may be absent from your domain like:

No sales or CTA page

No contact form

No up-to-date WHOIS information

Therefore sellers must take proper steps to ensure that buyers can reach them.

Now how can you find a potential buyer for your domain in seconds? The secret is hidden in two tools: namebio and whois.net.

This is how I do it:

Let’s consider my example, where I have a domain related to divorce like divorceSupport.org

Now I would go to namebio.com

In the keyword search area I enter divorce, do not mark any filters and hit search. Just like this:

move on to check out the search results now:

As you can clearly see, there will be a list of similar domain names sold previously in chronological order. Through this list you get names of domains similar to yours. This is very important indication as the people who have bought these domains might like to own divorceSupport.org.

Now suppose you select a top recent sale divorcerate.com and wish to find the information regarding the buyer. With the next tool, you will get even the phone numbers of the domain owners in seconds!!

Visit whois.domaintools.com

Enter divorcerate.com in the search and hit it

You will get this screen:

If the owner has not made the domain private then his details will be listed here. As you can see the owner’s email and name are mentioned clearly.

Most of the domain owners today don’t make their information private. I agree with their inclination. It helps them get more leads. Now let’s see a trick about how to know the exact place where your domain can sell!!

All you need to do is look at how good businesses sell products. It involves a few key attributes which can be universally applied:

Market Research

Liquidity Assessment

Cost Analysis

Product Appraisal

Marketing and Networking

These five essential points lead to the final three steps:

Lead Generation : You start finding potential buyers for your domains

Negotiation: Talks begin over the final selling price of your domains and some leads respond

Sale: Finally you will reach a bargain where you find the best value and the buyer finds it fit to pay a discussed amount for your domains. You make a sale!

So, what is the first step a seller must take to sell his or her product? It’s simple: Enter the marketplace where that product is sold. As far as domains are concerned there a several popular ways they can be sold. Some of the most popular domain sales channels are:

Display a “Domain for sale” message and a contact form on your domain’s home page

List them on Domain Sale sites such as GoDaddy, Flippa, Sedo, Afternic, etc.

List them on Domain Sale Forums such as DnForum, NamePros, Inforum, etc.

Hire Individual Brokers or Brokerage Firms

Direct peer-to-peer selling

Before entering the marketplace of your choice and entering your first quotes you should recapitulate on every aspect of your domain once again. One key factor is that you should classify your domain according to various parameters. It helps in finding targeted potential buyers for your domain and trims the time lags. Some the most obvious categories can be:

Brandable domains

Keyword Domains (Which can be further classified based on the keywords involved)

Reaching a final selling price can be tricky. Suppose after all the research and analytics you found that your domain’s real worth is $500. Now do you sell it for $550, $600 or $1000? Well, it depends on your core marketing capabilities that whether you can sell something worth less for a lot more or VICE VERSA. However, some things can be kept in mind while reaching a final strike price to quote to your buyers.

Include all costs: By all costs I mean each unit of time, effort and money that you have put into appraising a domain. These costs include the initial cost of buying the domain, the money spent on analytics and research, the time component which is devoted in this research. In many cases, people buy domains build traffic generating websites around them and then put up for sale. Such domainers must include the cost of putting up this website like content, marketing, optimization costs etc. It is important that you do not miss on any cost.

I monitor my costs by making excel sheets about each domain that I buy, research and renew. This way, I know exactly how much time, effort and money has been put into it. If all the costs come about to be $400 then there is no way I am selling the domain for less than that.

Set the minimum profit margin: This always helps. Once you have a precise idea about how far you will go then selling becomes easier. For a $400 domain, I will keep my final strike price to be $650, ensuring that I make a minimum profit of $250.

Keep room for negotiation: Negotiation is a part of every business deal. Fix a range in which you will be willing to negotiate with any potential buyer. For a domain worth $400 I can start the negotiations from $650 and come down fighting to $500. That is my negotiation range. If you start negotiating from $500 you will end up selling it for less than $450 (not always but often). Therefore always keep enough room for negotiation.

See Past Sale Trends: There could be domain names similar to yours. You can use the tools mentioned above to find out the last price they were sold at. This can give you an idea about how much your domain can go for.

Do not overprice your domain: As I mentioned earlier, not every domain is worth a million dollars. If your domain is worth $450 and you start quoting $2000 to buyers then you will have to wait for that one buyer who might pay $2000 but not today. It is essential to expect fairly to sell domains fast. Depending on your strategy of one big sale or bulk mass sale, you can choose. Selling domain at fair / lower price is easier and fast if its listed on buy now. But if you own a premium domain and you prefer to wait also look at your holding capacity.

Be ready to fail and try again: Lastly, you should always be realistic. Not every domain you buy will be sold at a good profit within a week. You have to keep doing your research and keep looking for opportunities. If you get 100 leads over a domain name then assume that only 4-5 will be willing to enter into negotiations and of that only 1 will turn into a sale. Therefore, you always have to be on your toes and realize the opportunity to strike when it presents itself. Having unrealistic targets will only lead to failed business.